Feeling the Vibes by Annie Dalton Read Free Book Online Page B

they do you’ll be on to them. And now Obi’s safe with the nuns there’s no point hanging around.”
    Brice was finishing up Lalla’s bread. “Nice story, darling,” he said, shaking his head, “but I don’t buy it. If anything, they’ll be mad keen to humiliate me. I’m a traitor in the Hell dimensions, remember. No, they’re planning something. I can feel it.”
    Later I saw him slip out to check the cosmic shields.
    I doubted if any PODS could tolerate the new improved Light levels, yet Brice was outside for ages tinkering around, adding super-powerful protection symbols to the ones we’d put in place.
    Watching him through the window I felt a teensy bit paranoid. Brice is not a panicky type but this mission had put him on edge from the start. If he thought there was a reason to be worried, we should probably be v.v. worried.
    Next day one of the helpers found a flier advertising a street fair. As well as stalls there were stilt walkers, street magicians, elephant rides. The nuns agreed the kids could go, so long as the older children looked after the little ones.
    Here was something else we hadn’t foreseen. A trip to the swings was one thing, but a crowded fairground presented cosmic security problems. I thought we shouldn’t risk it.
    “Too dangerous, right?” I asked the boys.
    Brice was sending phone pics of the orphanage to Lola. “For sure,” he said without looking up. “On the other hand we can’t exactly stop him.”
    “We can! We can get Obi to tell the girls he’s sick.”
    Reuben shook his head. “Brice is right. Not to mention Obi is incapable of telling a lie.”
    Eventually I had to agree. Short of putting Obi into a magical sleep until the fair was over, there wasn’t much we could do.
    We all set off after lunch.
    The prospect of a fair had brought hundreds of humans out on to the street. The war had made people grateful for any little treat.
    I’d been cooped up for what felt like aeons , so it was a relief to be out and about, though the weather was freezing, not to say really mad; one minute fierce bright sunshine, the next tiny snowflakes would come spinning down.
    If Fareeda and the other orphans felt the cold in their flimsy hand-me-downs, it didn’t show. They were bubbling with excitement. Fareeda started singing a popular love song she’d heard on the radio. The other girls immediately joined in. One boy grabbed a broom, pretending to be a Bollywood movie star dancing with his beloved. People laughed and clapped. Obi was loving it.
    We kept scanning the crowds, watching out for trouble.
    One of the orphans gave an ear-splitting shriek. She’d seen the helium balloons tugging on their strings at the entrance to the fair.
    We walked into a wall of noise. Bollywood tunes from tinny radios competed with music from merry-go-rounds and constant calling and cajoling from stallholders.
    Nansi and Fareeda immediately ran to a stall selling the super-syrupy Indian sweets I remembered from family feasts with Karmen’s rellies. The girls didn’t have a rupee between them, but they seemed to enjoy just window-shopping, deciding which was their favourite.
    “Laddoos are my best,” said Obi shyly.
    Nansi pulled a mad face. “No! Gulab jamun!” She pretended to gobble them all up until the sweet-seller angrily shooed them away.
    Tiny snowflakes sprinkled down on their caps and collars. The kids’ cheeks were pink with cold, but high as kites on fairground vibes they didn’t even notice.
    Obi hugged himself with delight as he caught sight of his first real live elephant in this lifetime. The keeper was giving it a snack between rides. Obi watched enchanted as the elephant curled its trunk gently around a piece of squishy banana, posting it carefully into its mouth. The actual elephant was almost invisible under its gaudy finery: shocking pink silk tassels, gold-painted bells and whatever.
    Obi’s face suddenly crumpled. “They’ve chained its legs! Why did they chain its